TampaMemo # 1: Bring Nick Johnson Home

To: Tampa

From: IT IS HIGH...

Re: First base

Date: March 3, 2008
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This memorandum is the first in a series of IT IS HIGH... advisories that you did not request.

Nevertheless, we hope that this unsolicited communication will help you navigate the sometimes difficult waters of your journey -- of our collective journey -- toward a 27th world championship.

The team from Washington that will soon play its home games in the shadows of the Florida Rock and Gravel Company has one too many firstbasemen.

We have none.

It is time to bring Nick Johnson home.

Like William Devane in The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, we stand before you now shouting: "Let Nick Play!"

31 years after that legendary film's release, Nick Johnson sits on 31 homers as a Yankee.

Don't let this poetic symmetry fall by the wayside.

Bring him home to Yankee Stadium.

Get Bowden on the phone over in Viera, and bring Johnson home.